The Bible instructs us to be in this world, but not of it (John 17:14-15) . Which is hard, right? Because the things of this world can be very appealing. It flirts with our flesh, our human desires…and can cause us to allow things in which we know better, to go unchecked or avoid conviction for.
One foot in the world and one in the Kingdom is dangerous. We have gotten so far away from wholly Holy living for Christ and instead abuse His grace, thinking “It’s ok. He’ll forgive me”. The Bible instructs us not to let any unclean thing be said by us (Ephesians 4:29), yet we scrambled for a tee that boasts that we curse a little. I blogged about it, read it here! We have gotten so comfortable with sleeping with a married man, then directing the choir on Sunday (or whenever we have church). Lose all our money at the casino or the club, but shout real pretty when the organ hit that one good note. Tell our children to live for Christ, but display the exact opposite in our daily living. How did we get to a place where this is ok living? It’s not. And we have to do better!
It’s carnal thinking. Carnal means worldly or earthly; temporal.
Romans 8:6 says “To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace”.
To be worldly or earthly, leads to death. Often times when the scriptures reference death, it means spiritual death. Spiritual death means to be separated from God. In this day and age with all the crazy going on in the world, and at this juncture in your personal life (I’m assuming there is an ordeal or two going on, like in mine), who can afford that?
Every day my prayer is that God would guard every gate for myself and my children. Meaning, all avenues that take in information; what we see, hear, touch, taste…our senses. Because when the wrong things tickle our senses, we are tempted in a huge way, to be carnal. That carnality affects our thinking and as we know, our thinking affects our actions. My children are young, and don’t know any better, so as their mother it’s my job to cover them in prayer, while they are still impressionable and naive. I, however, am a grown woman, I know better, and yet like most adults who haven’t mastered walking circumspectly, not guarding the avenues to my heart is detrimental to my spirit. I am not so big and bad that I can constantly surround myself with the temptations of this world, without bringing God with(in) me to cover me, and not fall victim. And neither are you.
The more you feed the “it’s ok. He will forgive me” carnal thinking, the bigger it will grow. The more you practice it, the better you will perfect it. This will eventually lead to no conviction when you are doing wrong. The small tugs at your heart will become nonexistent. And your eyes will hold a sense of cray cray that you wont even recognize. It will always lead to unhappiness…restlessness. When you constantly fill your mind, your self, with things of this world, things that please your senses, your physical is pleasured but your spirit aches for Christ, and it’s very hard to identify the ache. You will continue to search for the next high, building your carnal muscle, while starving your spiritual muscle. You will feel cluttered and bogged down, tired, joyless. Why? Because your spirit has been starved. Your relationship with Christ has been ignored. Only God can fill the need that you are chasing after. There is peace in Jesus. Click To Tweet
Practice a right relationship with Jesus Christ. It’s so fulfilling! When we meet a new guy, we spend all of our time, saturating ourselves with facts about him. We stay on the phone till 5:55 when our alarm is set for 6. We learn to do cartwheels because of the story he recalled of his first crush doing cartwheels in the school yard 125 years ago. We adjust our makeup to his liking. And he ain’t not nan bit our husband. Or even husband-material, truth be told. We sacrifice. Why not do that for Christ? For the man who loved us so much, He died for us. He loves us so much so, that He craves intimate relationship with us. He wants us to get to know Him (reading His word), and what He likes , He wants communication (prayer) and intimacy (worship). He wants to reveal things to us, grow us. We can’t get to that level, if our minds and hearts are filled with the junk of this world. We can’t get to that level being carnal.
We are going to sin. We know that, God didn’t call us to be perfect. That’s not what I’m saying. He didn’t call us to be carnal, either though. He called us to be His children. He called us to overcome!…
